It will be held under the auspices of an American president who was publicly humiliated by Israel’s prime minister on the issue that is at the center of the Israel-Palestine dispute — Israel’s continuing seizure and colonization of Arab land

Peace is a pattern of stability acceptable to those with the capacity to disturb it by violence. It is almost impossible to impose. It cannot become a reality, still less be sustained, if those who must accept it are excluded from it. This reality directs our attention to who is not at this gathering in Washington and what must be done to remedy the problems these absences create.

a longstanding American habit of treating Arab concerns about Israel as a form of anti-Semitism and tuning them out. Instead of hearing out and addressing Arab views, U.S. peace processors have repeatedly focused on soliciting Arab acts of kindness toward Israel. They argue that gestures of acceptance can help Israelis overcome their Holocaust-inspired political neuroses and take risks for peace.

Arabic has two quite different words that are both translated as “negotiation,” making a distinction that doesn’t exist in either English or Hebrew. One word, “musaawama,” refers to the no-holds-barred bargaining process that takes place in bazaars between strangers who may never see each other again and who therefore feel no obligation not to scam each other. Another, “mufaawadhat,” describes the dignified formal discussions about matters of honor and high principle that take place on a basis of mutual respect and equality between statesmen who seek a continuing relationship.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s travel to Jerusalem was a grand act of statesmanship to initiate a process of mufaawadhat — relationship-building between leaders and their polities. So was the Arab peace initiative of 2002. It called for a response in kind.

I cite this not to suggest that non-Arabs should adopt Arabic canons of thought, but to make a point about diplomatic effectiveness. To move a negotiating partner in a desired direction, one must understand how that partner understands things and help him to see a way forward that will bring him to an end he has been persuaded to want. One of the reasons we can't seem to move things as we desire in the Middle East is that we don’t make much effort to understand how others reason and how they rank their interests. In the case of the Israel-Palestine conundrum, we Americans are long on empathy and expertise about Israel and very, very short on these for the various Arab parties. The essential militarism of U.S. policies in the Middle East adds to our difficulties. We have become skilled at killing Arabs. We have forgotten how to listen to them or persuade them.

In foreign affairs, interests are the measure of all things. My assumption is that Americans and Norwegians, indeed Europeans in general, share common interests that require peace in the Holy Land. To my mind, these interests include — but are, of course, not limited to — gaining security and acceptance for a democratic state of Israel; eliminating the gross injustices and daily humiliations that foster Arab terrorism against Israel and its foreign allies and supporters, as well as friendly Arab regimes; and reversing the global spread of religious strife and prejudice, including, very likely, a revival of anti-Semitism in the West if current trends are not arrested. None of these aspirations can be fulfilled without an end to the Israeli occupation and freedom for Palestinians.

The Ottoman Turks were careful to ensure freedom of access for worship to adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths when they administered the city. It is an interest that Jews, Christians, and Muslims share.

pathologies of political life in the United States that paralyze the American diplomatic imagination. Tomorrow’s meeting may well demonstrate that, the election of Barack Obama notwithstanding, the United States is still unfit to manage the achievement of peace between Israel and the Arabs.

the United States has been obsessed with process rather than substance. It has failed to involve parties who are essential to peace. It has acted on Israel’s behalf to preempt rather than enlist international and regional support for peace. It has defined the issues in ways that preclude rather than promote progress. Its concept of a “peace process” has therefore become the handmaiden of Israeli expansionism rather than a driver for peace. There are alternatives to tomorrow’s diplomatic peace pageant on the Potomac. And, as Norway has shown, there is a role for powers other than America in crafting peace in the Holy Land.

the American monopoly on the management of the search for peace in Palestine remains unchallenged. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia — once a contender for countervailing influence in the region — has lapsed into impotence. The former colonial powers of the European Union, having earlier laid the basis for conflict in the region, have largely sat on their hands while wringing them, content to let America take the lead. China, India, and other Asian powers have prudently kept their political and military distance. In the region itself, Iran has postured and exploited the Palestinian cause without doing anything to advance it. Until recently, Turkey remained aloof.

the Obama administration has engaged the same aging impresarios who staged all the previously failed “peace processes” to produce and direct this one with no agreed script. The last time these guys staged such an ill-prepared meeting, at Camp David in 2000, it cost both heads of delegation, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, their political authority. It led not to peace but to escalating violence. The parties are showing up this time to minimize President Obama’s political embarrassment in advance of midterm elections in the United States, not to address his agenda — still less to address each other’s agendas. These are indeed difficulties. But the problems with this latest — and possibly final — iteration of the perpetually ineffectual “peace process” are more fundamental.

t. For the most part, Arab leaders have timorously demanded that America solve the Israel-Palestine problem for them, while obsequiously courting American protection against Israel, each other, Iran, and — in some cases — their own increasingly frustrated and angry subjects and citizens.

The Mahmoud Abbas administration retains power by grace of the Israeli occupation authorities and the United States, which prefer it to the government empowered by the Palestinian people at the polls. Mr. Abbas’s constitutional term of office has long since expired. He presides over a parliament whose most influential members are locked up in Israeli jails. It is not clear for whom he, his faction, or his administration can now speak.

the United
States has been obsessed with process rather than substance. It has failed to
involve parties who are essential to peace. It has acted on Israel’s behalf to
preempt rather than enlist international and regional support for peace. It has
defined the issues in ways that preclude rather than promote progress. Its
concept of a “peace process” has therefore become the handmaiden of Israeli
expansionism rather than a driver for peace. There are alternatives to
tomorrow’s diplomatic peace pageant on the Potomac. And, as Norway has shown,
there is a role for powers other than America in crafting peace in the Holy
Land.

the
United
States has been obsessed with process rather
than substance. It has failed to
involve
parties who are essential to peace. It has acted on Israel’s behalf to
preempt rather than enlist international and
regional support for peace. It has
defined
the issues in ways that preclude rather than promote progress. Its
concept of a “peace process” has therefore
become the handmaiden of Israeli
expansionism rather than a driver for peace.
There are alternatives to
tomorrow’s diplomatic peace pageant on the
Potomac. And, as Norway has shown,
there is a
role for powers other than America in crafting peace in the Holy
Land.

the
United
States has
been obsessed with process rather
than
substance. It has failed to
involve
parties
who are essential to peace. It has acted on Israel’s behalf to
preempt rather than enlist international
and
regional support for peace. It
has
defined
the
issues in ways that preclude rather than promote progress. Its
concept of a “peace process” has
therefore
become the handmaiden of Israeli
expansionism rather than a driver for
peace.
There are alternatives to
tomorrow’s diplomatic peace pageant on
the
Potomac. And, as Norway has
shown,
there is a
role for
powers other than America in crafting peace in the Holy
Land

The resentment of mostly Muslim Arabs at their governing elites’ failure to
meet these standards generates sympathy for terrorism directed not just at
Israel but at both the United States and Arab governments associated with it

Israeli backing these leaders need to retain their status in the occupied
territories. It ensures that they have media access and high-level visiting
rights in Washington. Meanwhile, for American leaders, engagement in some sort
of Middle East “peace process” has been essential to credibility in the Arab and
Islamic worlds, as well as with the ever-generous American Jewish community.

President Obama’s inability to break this pattern must be an enormous personal
disappointment to him. He came into office committed to crafting a new
relationship with the Arab and Muslim worlds. His first interview with the
international media was with Arab satellite television. He reached out publicly
and privately to Iran. He addressed the Turkish parliament with persuasive
empathy. He traveled to a great center of Islamic learning in Cairo to deliver a
remarkably eloquent message of conciliation to Muslims everywhere. He made it
clear that he understood the centrality of injustices in the Holy Land to Muslim
estrangement from the West. He promised a responsible withdrawal from Iraq and a
judicious recrafting of strategy in Afghanistan.

Few doubt
Mr. Obama’s sincerity. Yet none of his initiatives has led to policy change
anyone can detect, let alone believe in.